Power to the people? Freedom of expression and accountability online

“Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped with barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.” - Ronald Reagan

This was the conclusion of the, by then, former White House incumbent, during an interview with the Guardian in 1989. It was during that same year that the world witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and, as a consequence, a de facto end to over 40 years of Cold War.

Presumably, many people reading Reagan’s words at the time were simply relieved that the stand-off had been resolved largely by Glasnost, as opposed to a macabre homage to Stanley Kubrick.

Yet, a quick examination of today’s digital world would suggest that  ”The Gipper” and his predictions were often surprisingly prescient.

Since the end of the Cold War, the internet and web 2.0, have led to a surge in global communication and the dissemination of information. Whilst repressive states still exist, their attempts to control and manage information has become infinitely more difficult, as recent events in Tibet and Zimbabwe have shown.

In an era of 24-hour news, blogging, mobile phones, Twitter and You.tube, the capacity of governments, or anyone else, to control what individuals hear and say has been significantly reduced. This can only be considered a good thing…right?

As you might expect, there is a flip-side to this new-found freedom of expression: that of moderating content and the issue of accountability for published material. I should at this point make it clear that I do not advocate censorship and overwhelmingly subscribe to Voltaire’s maxim regarding free speech. This is also an ethos promoted by The Daily Telegraph on its blog site MyTelegraph , which, since May 2007, has allowed “anyone” to have their say.

This includes BNP councillor Richard Barnbrook, who (regrettably) finds ample time to regularly air his odious views on everything from immigration to Lily Allen. Of course, it would be all too easy to pillory the Telegraph for allowing this. By allowing the likes of Barnbrook to have their say might imply that you in some way condone or are sympathetic to his views.

The Telegraph’s response is that it has no moral right or desire to determine who can say what, and that the best way to undermine extremist views is by exposing them to public ridicule and contempt. Furthermore, according to MyTelegraph Communities Editor, Shane Richmond, Barnbrook’s posts are closely monitored by the Telegraph’s lawyers for anything that could be deemed illegal.

Such an approach is fine when dealing with relatively high profile individuals such as Barnbrook, but what about the millions of other blogs and social media outlets out there?

Traditional media formats are overseen and regulated by bodies such as Ofcom and the PCC. However, as the relationship between professional media and consumer further intertwines, the lines on contempt and defamation are becoming increasingly blurred.

Indeed, if the recent Manuelgate debacle at BBC Radio 2 is anything to go by, media professionals can sometimes not be trusted to moderate their own content, let alone their audience’s.

By Richmond’s own admission, the MyTelegraph site does not read or moderate the majority of its user content. This is because, perversely, not reading is often the safest approach in terms of legal accountability.

By reading and approving content (or worse still approving and then reading content) media organisations can potentially be held directly responsible should anything of a defamatory and/or libellous nature be published. By not reading what users send in, editors effectively absolve themselves of responsibility.

Surely, we can do better than this?

Web technologies and social medias have advanced so rapidly that the old guard have not had time to work out how to effectively regulate what goes on, or reform laws that will inevitably become outmoded. This it seems will be a challenge the media will have to face for many years to come.

Googlewhacked:How one search engine revolutionised the web

As I sit resignedly before the screen and prepare to draft yet another fascinating foray into the world that I’ve increasingly come to refer to as ”Groundblog day”, a sudden thought has inveigled its way into my stream of consciousness. That thought translates roughly to words of this effect: “Geez! How much harder would this thing be to write without google?”

Ok granted, when compared to the musings of Newton or Plato, few members of the blogsphere are likely to be awed by my little epiphany. It does nonetheless lead us nicely into this week’s topic: social media on the web. Those of you who took the time to watch the video at the start of this post will probably have some idea as to what social media is, but in case you missed it allow me to try and summarise.

Social media is an umbrella term that essentially refers to networking applications such as Facebook and Myspace, user-generated content sites such as YouTube, and, more latterly, developments such as Twitter and Digg. Search Engines also come under the banner of social media, and it is this aspect of the web that forms the basis of this entry.

Search Engines have, almost since the inception of the internet, functioned as the web surfers sextant in navigating the “oceans” of digital information.

In 1998 a revolutionary new search engine called Google came along allowing for faster and more pertinent search results than ever before. Today, Google tracks an estimated 1 trillion web pages (approximately 25% of all web content) and is often built-in as standard into computer toolbars as a testament to its mastery of the search engine world.

In many ways Google represents far more than simply a search engine: it has also been responsible for creating many other useful applications such as Google Maps, Google Earth and the upcoming Google Library Project (GLP). The GLP is unprecedented both in scale and possibility: the digitisation of literally millions of books and manuscripts from around the world, that will eventually be accessible from anywhere in the world.

Writing for the Guardian online, Professor John Sutherland says of the GLP:

“What we are witnessing this year is the beginning of the greatest act of recovered memory in the history of our species. The next decade will be the age of the unimaginably vast archive. More particularly, the dynamic and usable archive. The archive, that is, which hurls its contents at you, rather than requiring laborious spadework.” - John Sutherland, Guardian Online

Some would argue however that Google’s near monopolistic status within search engine/ social media is more behemoth than benevolent, with the example of the search engine’s acquiescence with Chinese government demands to censor its search results commonly cited as a compromise on Google’s motto.

Certainly we cannot dismiss Google’s decision to self-censor (indeed it has been roundly criticised for it) but we should not let one incident cloud our view of its liberating potential:

“Google should be presumed virtuous until proven evil. Just because it could be evil does not mean it is. Just being big and powerful does not make it evil.” - Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine.com

Moreover, Google has never rated its content based upon how much a contributor has paid for it (unlike some other search engines) meaning that search results tend to have far more relevancy to users. The impact of Google upon the internet and modern society has been enormous and, whilst perhaps not perfect, we’d do well to remember just how fundamental it has become to our daily lives:

“Google has opened up the world’s digital knowledge to everyone. We can answer any question, satisfy any curiosity, fix any error of fact in the blink of an eye. I wanted to know just how fast that is, so I asked Google how fast an eye blinks and in .3 seconds it told me that a blink takes .3 seconds.” - Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine.com

Aggregate this pal! The impact of RSS on news consumption

AS I write these words, a potential 200,000,000 American voters are heading to the voting booths in order to elect a new leader. A leader who can relish the prospect of stepping up to the plate, and supping from the poisoned chalice that is intractable war overseas, environmental chaos and a global fiscal crisis of nightmarish proportions.

Watching Obama and McCain duke it out for this dubious prize will be millions of ordinary people from all over the world. Most will keep abreast of the action through the traditional medium of a T.V. news channel.

In doing so however, are people narrowing their perspective of events? The answer is probably yes (particularly if they’ve decided to watch a certain U.S. news channel owned by a certain antipodean media oligarch).

Consumer choice is a big issue these days, and nowhere is that more apparent than on the Internet. Not content with the seemingly infinite repository of information that is Google, people can now cut out the “middle man” of searching for information altogether.

Welcome to the world of RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication), a device that enables people to have the information they’re after (such as election result updates) sent directly to their home pages.

This way it’s possible to collate multiple sources of information from all over the web in one convenient place, broadening perspective and making life that much easier.

RSS was the brainchild of Netscape employee Ramanathan V. Guha, who back in the late 1990s began working on a system to distribute news and information online. Fast forward to 2008 and with the latest versions of RSS, internet users have a highly effective tool for sifting the morasses of digital information, and keeping upto date with the latest developments.

Furthermore, specific feeds mean that users can select precisely what content they want to be kept informed of, be it market data or football scores. With my Netvibes page I certainly appear to have a pretty sweet set-up, but one question persists in nagging me: by streamlining and tailoring my news updates to specific fields, am I inadvertently blinkering my information consumption? It would certainly account for my consistent inability to recall the Bank of England base lending rate in David’s news quizes.

From this standpoint then, one could  take a decidedly critical view of RSS. Yes it facilitates convenience but it also arguably breeds ignorance.  We as journalists need to think very carefully about the so-called “social media” feted by some as the saviour of the profession. We’d do well remembering that sometimes the most important news can be that which we least want to hear.